After being appointed CEO, the biggest challenge she had to face was the faulty ignition switch situation which had led to the deaths of dozens (Unwavering). Straight off, this was a crisis management situation. Crisis Management refers to potential disasters such as product tampering, fire, earthquake, or reputation crisis or unethical conduct by an employee (BACW, p183). Mary put her conceptual skills to use, to find a solution to this problem. Being conceptually skilled …show more content…
This dress code rule is a “fitting representation of Barra’s management philosophy, which is focused on handing on power to managers and keeping GM as lean as possible” (Dress Code). She delegated authority to her employees and allowed them to make business decisions and they were held accountable for their actions (BACW, p 218). Under Mary Barra, General Motors became the “largest company by revenue run by a female CEO” (Barra CEO). In addition to achieving these remarkable feats, she also happens to be the CEO of the company with the “second-largest auto maker” in terms of sales, having generated $152 billion in revenue in the past year” (Barra CEO). The 54-year-old CEO has encouraged and motivated her engineers and pushed them to think creatively and design cars the way customers want them to be (Barra CEO). Bob Lutz, an automobile executive stated regarding Mary Barra that she must maintain the momentum and not to loose her grip (Barra CEO). Such words of motivation from fellow business tycoons will surely boost Mary’s morale and encourage her to do even more incredible stuff with her …show more content…
Barra being the intellectual leader she is, promised to have a self-driving car on the road by 2016 (Bumpy Ride). In addition, she tried to take back market share in the truck industry which happens to have higher profit margins than cars by introducing two new mini-sized pickups (Bumpy Ride). She is a democratic leader. She went for a tour of the Davison Road Processing Center Plant where the assembling and packaging of ignition switches takes place. She moved all around the factory to make sure everything was in order. She was interactive and indulged in conversations with the workers. An industrial engineer was really impressed by the CEO’s plant visit and how she handled the whole crisis. This shows that Mary is an involved CEO and she likes her employees to feel that the head of the company is involved in their daily works which drives them to work